Fox on the beach. This little guy galloped along side our beach cruisers for the better part of a mile…amazing.

Our home for the week.

Seaside Park Boardwalk.

Seaside Park looking north to the Heights…the infamous heights of MTV glory/shame. Guidos/Guidettes/Fry Food and every cliche on the planet…it did NOT let down.

New Jerseyian Gothic

For a beach you have to pay $35 bucks to play on…not too shabby a view.

Private beaches still make little sense to me. What’s next, private air? private trees? Jeesh.  But…. the fences make for sweet photo fodder…so my complaints only go so far.

A typical days hike.

I’m not even sure who these people are, but they sure loved posing for photos.

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Last weekend Darin, Jen, Jessica & Zoe and I all made the trek out to Anza Borrego. Pictured above, Jessica and Jen holding down the fort while Darin and I shuttle our camping gear out to the site.

The recent rains really brought our an incredible bloom. The desert floor wasn’t blanketed, but the variety of flowers in bloom was unreal. Definitely a special treat.

Ocotillo in bloom.

Looking north towards the badlands.

The moon rising above some Ocotillo blooms.

If you follow the road about 2/3 of the way up the photo, you can just barely make out my jeep at our campsite. We had the entire desert to ourselves.

Anza Borrego in bloom.

Slot Canyon.

Darin and Zoe mobbing it through the slots.

11 wineries.
9 hours.
6 idiots.

And we still have tomorrow.

Crapjacks.

Day 1

Day 1.5

Day 2

Day 2.5

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Days 6 & 7

Day 8

Day 9

Days 10 & 11

After our retreat on Ko Chang, we headed back to the density of Bangkok. We unwound over the next few days, and while we crammed in an amazing amount of shopping, massages, and general sightseeing around the city, we also made our way an hour north to the ancient city of Ayutthaya.

Thailand’s version of Angkor Wat, Ayutthaya is a vast, sprawling collection of ancient temple ruins.  Massive Buddahs, Temple structures, and crazy tuk tuk drivers flying around the city at mach 7.

Again, we opted for the self guided tour of the ruins and let our brief Lonely Planet description guide us on our way.  But really, I think our brief little stay in the ancient city was more a way of decompressing from our adventures and finding some of the real, hidden beauty in the Thai culture.

We found ourselves exploring this sleepy, ancient city with about 300 local school children.  The boys above found an exhausted Jessica and Melinda more than fascinating and almost sprained each of their necks doing double and triple takes as they walked by.

The flowers in Thailand are in a perpetual state of in bloom, and the heat is in a perpetual state of blisteringly stupid hot.

Apparently this used to be the Thailand capitol. I’d like to imagine that this building was the DMV…or perhaps the post office.

Thai school girls on a field trip. It was weird, both the boys and girls school uniforms were identical to American Boy Scout and Girl Scout uniforms, down to the last detail… I suppose they could very well have been boy scouts and girl scouts as opposed to school children like I assumed…but then that wouldn’t make for as interesting a story…now would it?

Apparently, judging by his omni-presence in the form of statue… Buddah was, and may still be, bigger than Hello Kitty…but just barely.

Its funny looking back at this photo.  We spent a good portion of our time in Bangkok reading the various travel books we had collected, looking for things to do that day.  A tiny little thumbnail of this photo lead us on a hour and a half cab ride to this city and we wound up spending an incredible day they wandering through the ruins.  It’s amazingly liberating having no plans, and exploring on a whim.

The small island of Ko Yuak can be seen directly above the boat in this photo (above).  It’s funny, looking back at this photo it actually looks quite far away. But I can assure you, when standing on the white sandy beach with your feet in the 80 degree water, nothing looks THAT far away. None of us questioned the distance we were about to attempt prior to setting out… in fact, just the day before, after riding elephants, we capped the day by enjoying a nice evening paddle out to the closest island and it was really quite easy (below)

When driving into our little beach community, you could see this island from the roadway.  And smack dab in the middle of it was a perfect little secluded beach. Given that anyone looking could see this from the road, combined with it’s proximity to the main shoreline, this place wound up getting more visitors than any secluded beach ever should.

So many visitors in fact, that we only stayed a short while here, and then decided our time would be far better spent exploring the rest of the island by kayak.  This was easily some of the worlds best kayaking, we paddled through mangrove reefs, in and out of caves, and over crystal clear teal blue waters…incredible.

Gotta love all day “tri-yak” rentals for $3 dollars.

Mimi and Clay rocking the Yak.

This place was so close to our hotel that on our paddle back to the resort, we passed 3, less than sober, guys swimming out to the island to stay the night on the beach.  Apparently they had  all chipped in on an inflatable mattress and used it as a quasi raft to make there way to the little beach. Straight out of the Leonardo DiCaprio’s “The Beach”, these guys had a great idea…but once they found they’re soon to be beds shared with sand crabs, mice, and whatever else lives on tropical islands…I’m sure they weren’t as happy with their drunken decision of excellence.

Anyhow, this “seclusion” was a little too easy for me.

The next day we had to paddle to more distant islands…”grand rewards must await those who dare attempt such endeavors…” I remember thinking to myself. My enthusiasm caught on…and we made plans to spend the following day island kayak hopping.

And so we found our self titled island… “Mobile Island”.  Although, not without some serious doubts on our part.  First off, there are 3 islands off the coast (seen in the top photo) the left most being closest, the right most being furthest. Mobile Island (ko yuak; above) being the furthest.  For those of you that have paddled an “ocean mile” in a 2 person kayak, you know that things tend to be about twice as far as predicted.  And generally, as a rule, you only figure this out once you’re half way…stranded in the middle of open, shark infested, ocean….good times.

When we finally made it to the first island…we were all exhausted from the paddling, and the sun, and ready to take refuge on some pristine sandy beach.

…that was until we realized no such beach exists on island no. 1.

Off to island number 2.

More of the same…craggy, rocky shore line.  Even if we wanted to take a break, landing the kayaks would have been disastrous.

So island number 3 was our only hope…and seriously…we needed it… I’m pretty sure were there no beach there, we would have found anything resembling shade and just laid in the kayak, afloat, for an hour resting adrift in the ocean.

Paydirt! Ko Yuak had a beach…err….shelly, coral shard infested beachlike beach. But we didn’t care…at this point those jagged little daggers of coral and shells looked like a bed of down feathers. So we beached the Yaks and explored our new home for the day.

Hanging from the tree here you can see some of  the shell Mobiles visitors to the island had left behind.

Ko Yuak landing.

Looking back at island no. 2. The beachless temptress.

Looking out over the reef of Ko Yuak.  Apparently this is some of the best snorkeling in Ko Chang, but the currents had really picked up and the water visibility was only like 5-10 feet.  Free diving in strong currents and crappy visibility, mixed with tropical reefs bearing all kinds of pokey, stabby, corally daggers of fun, makes snorkeling a little less enjoyable…but still I spent a good hour inspecting said playgrounds of death.

Jessica and Clayton even braved the impending punctures to the feet for some snorkeling with me

Jessica standing with her “trash mobile” both art and recycling. Jessica made quite the political statement and managed to strike a pose while doing it.

This concluded our stay on Ko Chang nicely. After a few hours on the island, we paddled back to the main shoreline and spent our last night enjoying some smoking hot green curry and Chang Beers. I even helped Melinda brave the dreaded “beach bartering” and helped her score a sweet smash ball set from one of the vendors on the beach. Mimi even let me casually talk the sweet woman down about 3 dollars before giving in and paying whatever she wanted…

I have some more photos of the island here: http://www.davidhgatley.com/gatlog/?p=536

One of the serious highlights of our trip was our “elephant experience”. Admittedly, this was one of the more “touristy” activities. That being said, it was worth every ounce of unoriginality. Not only did we get to swim with and bathe the elephants, but we then got to ride them through the thick rainforests of Ko Chang….incredible.

Jessica and Melinda falling in love.

First it was purses in China. Then it was Zoe. Now, my competition is a giant, water loving elephant… a good problem to have.

Clayton getting in on the bathing action. This river was surprisingly frigid…and filled with elephant poop, but soooo worth it! When it was my turn to join the action, I jumped into the water like a red headed, american fool…and totally scratched the hell out of my ankle… mixing said poopy water, with whatever other gnarly Thai microbes and omebas this river contained…and a gash on my ankle, resulted in an infection that rivaled that offstaff, or …. well ok it wasn’t that bad…but seriously it was pretty gross.

The afterglow of this moment still has a smile planted on Jessica’s face. I’m glad I caught it.

In an elephant train straight out of our daydreams, we roamed casually through the rainforest and really felt like we were on another planet.  I have to admit, I didn’t think I would enjoy this as much as I did, but scenes like the one above will stay with me forever. I’m so glad we did it.

At the conclustion of our day with the bohemoths, we got to get a little face time (so to speak) in with our trunked friends.

These animals really were amazingly sweet and docile. I’m not sure how much truth there is in the claim that this was an “elephant sanctuary” but from what we could tell, all these animals seemed to be underworked, well fed, and generally happy.

I’ll leave you with a sight that is much better experienced via blog…than in person.

Ahhh, Ko Chang island off the south eastern tip of Thailand.  Pictured above, translated as Elephant Island, we found a nice little slice of heaven in this place and wound up spending a good 4 days of our trip here. It turned out to be an incredible time.

After a rather adventurous 4 hour taxi ride from the Poi Pet border of Thailand and Cambodia, we found ourselves in the sleepy coastal community of Trat and then the Laem Ngop ferry stop. Our taxi driver managed to get us to the pier perfectly on time, however we lagged a little bit in getting our things together and watched as the last ferry for an hour sailed off towards our Ko Chang destination.  By the time we realized where we were exactly, keep in mind we only decided this was our destination 8 hours earlier, we found ourselves at a marvelous little pier jutting out into the Gulf of Thailand.  Jessica and Melinda (above) used our hour layover in paradise to write some much over do postcards…which I think are still unmailed…go figure. If you happen to get one in the near future…know, at the least, that they were written here

On the ferry…It took us about 45 minutes to cross to the Island, and as you can see from the photos, the sun was already close to setting. We had absolutely no idea where/what we were doing once we got across to the island…no reservations…no Baht (just american dollars, which no Thai accepts)…no clue where we were headed.  All we had was a vague notion that we wanted to stay, somewhere cheap, on the beach.

By the time we made it across, we had missed the last taxi for an hour…(taxis on Ko Chang consist of a modified truck bed with benches shuttling 14 people at a time around the island. We almost made the grave descion to rent some scooters and haphazardly navigate the treacherous roads piled 2 to a bike with all of our luggage.  Had that actually played out, I’m sure we would have killed eachother if the roads hadn’t already done so…but Jessica wisely talked us out of it, and sweet talked a taxi driver into taking the 4 of us to our destination…he wanted to wait for the next ferry so he could get 14 people in his truck and get the full fare. We wound up paying him something like 15 US dollars, which is outrageously expensive for a Thai taxi…but we were tired, it was getting late, dark…and hell it’s 15 dollars.

Anyhow, we pulled up to a strip of shops and beachfront hotels and made our way from lobby to lobby checking for availability. Once we found a place, we paid top price (about $100 US split 4 ways), threw our bags down, ran barefooted to the beach, and cracked open some ice cold beer and finished off the night watching some cliche fire dancing and listening to some terrible remix of American Hip Hop blasting away from the beachside dance clubs.

Being that we arrived at night, we really had no idea what our little beach haven actually looked like.  We all awoke before the sun, and wandered about 20 steps from our front door to find this (above). Not too shabby.

85 degree waters, palm fronds dangling into the water, 50 cent beers…David was happy.

White Sand Beach, Ko Chang, Thailand.

Jessica in the Ko Chang “taxi” on our way to Lonely Beach and a bungalow on the sand for $30 US a night….UPGRADE.

Ko Chang Freeway. Notoriously sketchy roadways, and what could have easily been the demise by way of scooters for our happy little 4 some.

Nature Hotel, Lonely Beach, Ko Chang.  http://www.travelfish.org/accommodation_profile/thailand/eastern_thailand/trat/lonely_beach_and_bailan_bay/all/1985. This place was ideallic beach resort by day, and crazy dance club party pad by night. This photo was taken from our lunch table cabana.

Rough way to end the day.

The islands seen in the distance here wound up becoming targets for our kayak adventures, I’ll post some photos from those trips soon. Stay tuned.